The $5.7 Billion Hole in Shutdown Coverage
The more one digs into Trump’s border wall funding request, the more arbitrary and phony it appears.
‘DC Has Been Consistently Out of Touch With the Reality of the Borderlands’
“The environmental community, the human rights community and the indigenous communities have really come together against border militarization.”
Debbie Weingarten on the Borderlands, Alexander Main on Maduro’s Reelection
“Building a wall” at the US/Mexico border is an abstraction for many Americans–but not for people who live in the borderlands, and those who listen to those who do.
Corporate Press Stoops to Absurdity to Balance Trump’s Border Wall Lies
Both the AP and New York Times factcheck stories following Trump’s immigration speech included just a single example from the Democratic response. Perhaps not coincidentally, both of those strained, scrounging-for-anything examples turned out as flaming journalistic failures.
‘The Idea Is to Have a Conversation About What Happened to Us’
“Understanding the limits of the dialogue possible in the elite but influential press is crucial to understanding our political lives.”
Best of CounterSpin 2018
Understanding the limits of the dialogue possible in the elite but influential press is crucial to understanding our political lives…and the importance of maintaining spaces where we can openly debate and challenge a status quo that is harming millions of people and the planet.
‘Domestic Workers Don’t Have Protections Against Discrimination and Harassment’
“It was the legacy of slavery that led to them not being recognized as workers, and not given the same rights and protections as others.”
Paul Rosenberg on GOP Power Grabs, Mariana Viturro on Domestic Workers Bill of Rights
GOP maneuvers reacting to electoral results they don’t like, with overt power grabs that override the express will of voters, define “anti-democratic”—and they rely on a lack of public awareness, abetted by a lack of media sunlight.
Refugee Caravan: Lots of Coverage, Little Context
There is very little discussion of why refugees are so desperate to leave their countries and travel to the US. When any explanation is given for why people are migrating, it is extremely shallow.
Pundits Policing Protest at Tucker Carlson’s House
Commentary on a demonstration outside the home of Fox News host Tucker Carlson earlier this month used an exaggerated version of events to delegitimize a wide range of protest tactics.
Who, Us? Corporate Media Ignore Their Role in Trump’s Refugee ‘Invasion’ Panic
The political press dutifully chased Trump’s rhetorical tail as Election Day neared, and repeatedly ceded its editorial judgment and newshole to the nativist fearmongering he used to stoke the Republican Party’s base.
Audrey Sasson on Antisemitism and Resistance
Other people also have a worldview that connects Jews, black and brown people, immigrants and other disadvantaged communities—connects them in coalitions that recognize their shared vulnerability, and work together for social and economic justice.
‘The US Immigration System Is Inherently Abusive and Violent and Racist’
“Different immigrant communities have different realities and lived experiences. And I want to highlight those as much as possible, and make them the story, make them the center of the story.”
Tina Vasquez on Child Separation, Mara Verheyden-Hilliard on Protest Suppression
When corporate media tell the story of migrant children through the White House’s cruel prism—even if they criticize it—they’re obscuring ideas and actors that are moving things in a more humane direction.
Key Fact Obscured in Immigration Coverage: MS-13 Was Made in USA
Much media coverage of immigration misses out on why large numbers of people from the Northern Triangle are migrating to the US in the first place. Over the past three generations, the Northern Triangle countries, long marked by profound levels of inequality, have each experienced horribly destructive civil wars and military coups–with the US intimately involved in each of these.
Calls to Abolish ICE Get Cold Shoulder on Newspaper Opinion Pages
Of the 90 opinion pieces on the subject of ICE that were published in papers across the US from June 28 to July 18, 85 were explicitly against abolishing ICE, while only five were supportive.
‘We Point to the Need to Decriminalize Migration’
“If we continue to have a system that responds to everything with punishment and criminalization, we’re going to continue to confront this failure over and over, and not just in migration.”
Child Separation Coverage Focused on Beltway Debate, Not Immigrant Voices
As corporate media dove into the child separation story, the voices of those impacted most by immigration policy were drowned out by soundbites from congressmembers and Trump administration officials.
Jacinta Gonzalez on Immigration Rights, Jocelyn McCalla on Haiti Uprising
While outrage at family separation at the Mexican border is a fine starting point for a movement for change, it cannot be its end. We talk this week about bigger, positive visions on immigration.
Immigration Story Missing Context of Hunger and Freedom
On the separation of immigrant families, many recent news stories tell harrowing and important specific stories, but they mostly don’t get into the structural causes, the deep history.
